Passion for Bees, Compassion for Beekeepers

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Cherry blossoms and bees (2).

1. March 20th. There is one cherry tree between Mason hall and Natural Science, almost ready to bloom. Yesterday (March 240 I saw two others blooming next to Grand River. Probably all three were Japanese flowering cherry.

2. flower buds against the blue sky.

3. ready to bloom

4. one is starting to open.

5. One blooms here.

6. the next day, March 21st, the whole tree was in peak bloom!

7. so pretty! I stayed there for 40 min waiting for bees…

8. I used backlight (shot against the sun light) for this one… making the flowers translucent.

9.

10. against blue sky.

11. another one.

12. another.

13. three branches.

14. a bumble bee queen is foraging.

15. the same one.

16. finally a honey bee! I probably did not shoot this one intentionally…nice composition!

Zach's other web projects

TweetProblem: There are R codes for calculating LC50 or LD50 using 4 to 6 data points. However, none uses control mortality correction (e.g. Abbott correction). There is an ecotoxicology package which does this, but it seems hugely complex to use. Solution: In the code below, we put the last line as the control mortality (dose=0), […]

TweetAugust and Sept is a tough time for honey bees. Goldenrod is starting but not going strong yet around late Aug so honey bees are always trying to find something good for them. Two good plants bloom around this time: China sumac and seven son’s flowers. I noticed last year (Aug 22) that a large […]

TweetThere was on post (June 23rd, 2016), I was begging everyone to show me if they saw honey bees foraging on catalpa leaves. No one responded. On Sunday June 26, I finally had the luck to see honey bees foraging on the back of catalpa leaves. I was going to give up after waiting for […]

TweetAt the Friday lab meeting, I was told that one colony has become all “laying workers” by a visiting scholar in my lab, so I decided to take some photos the same day. I have seen workers backing into cells before, to lay eggs but at that time I did not have a digital camera […]

Tweet(rewritten from “the lady in red”) The crocosmia sings: You are dancing with me I become red, cheek to cheek There’s nobody here I hide, you seek You bury deep in me To take all my honey But I hardly know that your beauty is so bright It outshines the sunlight 1. 2. 3. Chinese […]

TweetOk, I have seen bees foraging on catalpa flowers, many years ago. In fact here are some pictures I took, in 2005 (date stamp: 2005-06-18 10:31:24). I remember this was in Okemos, behind the Quality Dairy Store near Grand River and Dobie. At that time I did not notice that catalpa leaves also have extra-floral […]

TweetContact(s): Mark Kuykendall , Zachary Huang New insights into the reproductive secrets of one of the world’s tiniest and most destructive parasites – the Varroa mite – has scientists edging closer to regulating them. “If you know your enemies better, you can come up with new ways of controlling them,” said Michigan State University entomologist […]

TweetThis blog continues from last time, in trying to generate “long data form” required by R (or any survival analysis, for that matter, such as SAS or SPSS), from “short data from” which is easier to input and can reduce errors. Using “times=N” last time was not very neat, so this is another method, looping […]

TweetIn my last blog, we successfully reproduced the SAS method for survival analysis, but it was a pain (and error prone) to do one line each for one testing subject. In other words, if on day 10, you had 50 dead bees, you will have to enter 50 lines of data! With the help of […]